


Balance

by allherstarryfays



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Uncle Luke Vibes, Eventual Sex, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, POV Alternating, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Doesn't Give a Fuck about the Haters, Reylo Trash Fire Burning Bright from the Embers of TRoS, The Force Ships It, The Mama and Son Reunion that was Promised
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:35:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22595632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allherstarryfays/pseuds/allherstarryfays
Summary: Without each other, Ben and Rey's connection to the Force is weakened. Trapped in the World Between Worlds, Ben must face the consequences of Kylo Ren and the First Order in order to leave. Back on the Resistance Base on Arjan Kloss, Rey seeks a way to get Ben back with the reluctant help of Finn.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m just a basic bench with a lot of feelings that need sorting through and here’s the result. This is cannon-ish, but diverges where I want it to and was not researched thoroughly. The focus of this work is on Rey and Ben’s relationship and not on nitty-gritty Star Wars lore. I’m somewhat of a newb to the fandom because even though I grew up with it, I didn’t have real fan fuzzies until the sequel trilogy BECAUSE ADAM DRIVER. 
> 
> ALSO, if the thought of Reylo distresses you, do not proceed further. This is a Reylo trash bonfire and you will get burned. To the Reylo fam, go ahead and cozy up to the flame. 
> 
> Special thanks to my BETA readers, you know who you are. Our love is real, because I let you read this in the first place. I know of no greater intimacy between two human beings.

_Prologue_

Ben quiets his mind, focuses on the beat of his heart, the rush of breath expanding both lungs and closes his eyes. He senses energy—life itself—and grabs hold of it. Willing the energy outside of himself, his blood burns in response and pools in the hand over Rey. _You can’t revive the dead_ , but the slightest tremor of hope disrupts the despair worming its way through him, and this hope is reinforced by the awareness of his grandfather’s presence, strengthening him from beyond. He conjures Rey in his mind and a series of impressions flood through him—a determined brow, the smell of sweat, a flurry of snow, a tantalizing brush between fingertips in the dark, salt and ocean spray, wind and waves. Distracted, he almost misses the subtle rise of breath beneath his hand and the slide of cool skin against his—

His breath catches in his throat and relief mingled with fear washes over him as he witnesses her lifeless expression reanimate with surprise and she sits upright. Searching her face, he steels himself for her to shrink away from him and for the sudden loss of weight in his arms when her eyes light up with recognition. He stiffens. “Ben?” she breathes out.

Her fingers graze both sides of his face, displacing the hair around his face. Warmth spreads beneath her touch and into his limbs as they tingle with anticipation. He hesitates, afraid to ruin the moment with brash passion when she eliminates the distance between them and their mouths melt together. His heart beats very fast against his chest as he pulls her closer, holding lightly onto the nape of her neck.

They stay close, breathing together. Overcome with giddiness, he smiles as a foreign sense of ease settles over him. Without warning an unknown power seizes upon him. He tries to stay upright, but his natural strength is easily overcome.

Ben Solo disappears into thin air.

Part I

_Ben_

Days. Months. Years. Time is irrelevant. He is submerged beneath the waves of a deep sleep suppressed of thought or feeling. Consciousness prickles at the periphery of his mind and colors appear, muted and blurry at first, but gaining in clarity and vibrance as objects take shape. Awareness shifts to his body, now solid beneath him. He processes his surroundings—staring for several seconds without seeing until recognition strikes—his old bedroom.

He scans the room, anxious to see if it is as he remembers it and is momentarily displaced in time. Everything is here. His model collection of star destroyers, freighters and battleships remain proudly displayed over his desk and with it an unbidden memory resurfaces of a heated argument with his father regarding the engineering superiority of Empire spacecraft. His calligraphy pens and notebooks are haphazardly arranged on top of his desk as if only recently abandoned. One of his notebooks is flung open, revealing a familiar lightsaber sketch. He runs a finger over the design, and feels a foreboding shiver down his spine as he stares at the weapon he once wielded as Kylo Ren—except the blade burns blue in this version. His nostalgia is replaced with claustrophobia and he quickly turns around to leave when he sees his mother hovering in the doorway—his mother as he remembers her from his childhood—not the wizened war general she died as, but as the women his father fell in love with and who held him when he awoke from nightmares in the middle of the night.

A sharp intake of breath. “Mom I—” he begins, but emotion catches in his throat and he is unable to continue. His joy at her unexpected presence dims as his stomach twists in anguished knots. Regret overtakes him and he crumples onto the floor by her feet.

She kneels beside him and gingerly takes his face between her hands. He almost recoils from her touch, but forces himself to meet her eyes. Her mouth breaks into a tremulous smile, “I know,” she says and he lets out a sob of relief, breaking down into tears.

They clasp tightly onto one another, and even though a grown man now, who easily dwarfs his mother—the same warmth permeates through him that he once felt as a haunted little boy that could never sleep through the night.

Regaining sufficient composure, he vocalizes the question plaguing him since his arrival. “I’m dead, aren’t I?” It comes out more as a statement than a question.

“Not quite,” her eyes glimmer mischievously.

He furrows his brow and she continues, “When you used your life force to save Rey you began to die.”

It was as he thought. When he placed his hand over Rey, he embraced death in the same moment. The Force demanded balance. Life for life, and her life was worth so much more than his. But then she kissed him. He reaches for his mouth, remembering the impression of her lips against his.

“You stopped the process?”

She nods. “The World Between Worlds. A place between life and death. Your life has been preserved and nourished within the Force here. It was always a rumor...one the Jedi fought to hide for fear of misuse.”

He processes the information, vaguely recalling the phrase from a text he read under Luke, but brushes his curiosity aside. “I can leave?” his heart lurches forward at the prospect. She studies his face as though deliberating how much information to divulge when he interrupts her. “Did you know about the Force Dyad?”

“I suspected a bond, but thought it was not my place to meddle.” She smiles, “I hoped that whatever it was, it would serve you both well.”

“You understand then that I have to get back to her. Already I—” he closes his eyes. “My connection with the Force is weakened. She must feel the same loss.” The thought fills him with dread, imagining her alone and dulled to her senses—a fate worse than death to most Jedi. “Yes,” she responds, her eyes brimming with unexpected emotion. “But what happens next will cost you Ben.”

_Rey_

Rey closes her eyes and digs her hands deep into the soil. Reaching out with her feelings, she attempts to perceive the life around her—the plants, the trees, the scuttling insects burying deep inside the earth—but senses nothing except the cold, soft ground between her fingers. Be with me. She breathes deeply, but it’s hopeless as frustration builds inside her and her eyes fly open.

“I can’t!” she cries out, flinging dirt into her face as she tears her hands free from the ground.

“Maybe you’re doing it wrong,” Finn suggests. He’s leaning against a nearby tree. “Focus on your breath,” he demonstrates with an exaggerated inhale and exhale and she throws him a withering look. He raises his hands defensively, “Hey, I’m new to this and I was hoping you’d be the one helping me not the other way around...”

Rey sighs, suddenly exhausted. For months she has stared up at her ceiling in a semiconscious daze, sleep arriving in fitful, receding waves. “I need a teacher. A proper one.” As soon as she says it, she hears his voice, “ _You need a teacher! I can show you the ways of the Force_ ,” in her head, but then thinks of Luke and Leia and mutters to herself, “No, I had teachers. Good ones. What I need is Ben.”

Finn purses his lips thoughtfully. “Have you tried—?”

“Yes! Of course, I have! I can’t reach him.” She paces the ground, “It’s like something is broken...when I needed Luke, he appeared to me, but with Ben...” she stops in front of Finn, seeing past him. “I could always feel him before, even when I didn’t want to, but now he’s just gone.”

She senses Finn’s internal conflict to appear sympathetic while secretly feeling relieved at Ben’s disappearance then and lashes out suddenly, “You don’t understand. You can’t because you hate him and who he was.”

His eyes widen with incredulity, “Can you blame me? I saw the man execute innocent people,” he says, accentuating the last three words for dramatic effect. “For most of my life, I was a weapon of his rage and people like him. Forgive me for not mourning the boyfriend that enslaved me and you by the sound of it!”

“We didn’t choose to be bound like this! And Ben was also a victim of the Dark Side—targeted from childhood just as you were! You weren’t there...” Ben’s final smile flashes through her mind, and her heart clenches painfully. “If he came back, he’d be different. You’d see.”

“We can’t bring him back, Rey” he breaks gently. Their eyes meet and Finn seems remorseful. He lightly squeezes her arm.

“Ben brought me back and it wasn't supposed to be possible. There's a way, I just don’t understand how yet and I _won’t_ stop trying,” she adds defiantly. Searching for the right words, she tries to explain further, “It’s like I’m blind without him,” but then she backpedals, rolling her eyes at her own histrionics. “I can see, but everything is...grey. Hidden from me. Ben is gone, and a part of me with him. Wherever he is," her voice breaks, "Ben won't be able to rest either. We need each other."

Finn pulls her into a hug. “I’ll help you, Rey. I don’t like it, but that doesn’t matter...we’re going to get you whole again. Just don’t ask me to forgive him if I don’t want to.”

She smiles, feeling grateful and rests her head on his shoulder. “Thank you,” she says finally. “I won’t.”

For the first time, Rey considers the consequences of bringing Ben back and how it might isolate her from her new family with the former Resistance. She shakes off the worry as quickly as it came, deciding to save it for another day. First, she must reach Ben.


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My BETA readers dropped out so it took longer to put this chapter out. ALSO I HAVE BEEN SO DEPRESSED. But I love this story and still want to tell it.

Part II

_Ben_

Ben has been staring at the horizon for some time, watching the fading light burn before dissolving into night. The air is unnaturally warm but he protectively holds onto his arms anyway, resting them on top of his knees. He's perched on top of a grassy hill overlooking a familiar green valley whose name or location evades him and he is made painfully aware of the true extent of his lifelong inattention to his surroundings. “He’s always in his head,” his father used to say. “It’s unhealthy,” to which his mother once replied, “Meanwhile yours remains blissfully empty...”

He’s not quite sure how to refer to his current state of existence being neither wholly alive or dead—he just is. Maybe he could get used to being here. It’s peaceful enough. Ben snickers out loud. _Yeah right_.

After he learned what was required of him he left to get fresh air. It was too much to process in _that_ place and with _her_ there. He needed to be alone to sort out his thoughts privately.

Entrance into the World Between Worlds is rare, reserved for the few Jedi capable of wielding its power without disrupting the delicate balance of the Force. He alternates between feelings of awe and anguish, realizing with a pang that the type of power he once sought from the Dark Side had been with someone like his mother all along. She gave her place to him, relinquishing her opportunity to rejoin the living and will pass on now like everyone else. Quick to assure him that this is what she wanted she placed a hand over his and looked him straight in the eye, “There’s nothing left for me there, but there is for you.”

Because his entrance was gifted rather than earned, he must prove worthy of opening the door back to the living. When he asked how her face darkened and she explained that he must suffer the consequences of his reign as Supreme Leader by witnessing the cosmic breadth of destruction perpetuated by the First Order.

“I was a puppet,” he argued then. “Of Snoke. Palpatine. I can’t even say for sure now, which choices were ever mine.”

She responded with a critical look. “Okay yes," he backpedaled, "Regardless, I was complicit in their actions.” He swallowed then, unable to fathom the horror that awaited him.

As Kylo Ren, he rationalized the First Order’s actions until its violent methods were justifiable, necessary even. Snoke deluded him into believing that the First Order was the only way for him to prove his worth and free himself from the pain and insecurities of his past. There was no going back...and destruction was the fastest way forward. Even if deemed worthy, he must obtain permission from the living to re-enter their domain. But who would let him in? No one mourned him. No one alive knew Ben Solo. No one except Rey. Without the full strength of the Dyad behind him and with a compromised connection to the Force, he questioned his ability to reach her. As ready as he feels to face the consequences and to do whatever is necessary—unmistakable dread weighs him down. The odds are against him and pure nerve may not be enough. 

“Ben.” He turns towards the voice and at first hot anger radiates through him, but then he takes a steadying breath and his temper cools. “Uncle,” he replies, gesturing at the ground next to him. To his surprise Luke obliges, but looking over, he notes the healthy distance between them. _Fair, given the circumstances of their last meeting_. Luke regards him and Ben feels exposed —reverted back into a teenager by the familiar gaze—when something unexpected happens. Luke smirks and mutters, “A pretty pair of eyes,” underneath his breath, as if sharing a secret joke with himself. Ben looks quizzical, unsure of how to respond, but is relieved by the break in tension and just shakes his head with bewildered amusement. 

For several minutes they stare at the deepening night sky in silence.

“I let you down, Ben,” he hears beside him and looking over, notes Luke’s downcast eyes. “I let my fear rather than my hope guide your training. I was scared of failure and I failed anyway. You were so powerful and so...angry. I should have realized that what you needed was a friend...more than a teacher. I was never a father...” he adds by way of explanation and something like regret flashes across his eyes.

“My own father didn’t know what to do and ran away. At least you tried. I wasn’t the most pleasant company,” he admits, and Luke laughs.

“I didn’t know it was possible for one person to scowl so much,” he replies and Ben snorts, rolling his eyes.

A moment of silence passes. "I'm going to help you however I can. I share responsibility for Kylo Ren, and I hated the kid, but..." he looks over at him then, "Ben deserves to live."

"Thank you,” he says, genuinely moved by his uncle’s offer.

Still, Ben can’t quite shake an impending sense of doom. He thinks of Rey then and her fingers in his hair. Maybe it was enough.

Luke claps a hand onto his shoulder. "C'mon. There's a girl waiting for you,” he says, winking at him.

_Rey_

Rey is lying on the couch of Leia’s former quarters trying to sleep. She falls in and out of consciousness, startling awake as though some deep part of her resents the fatigue and is lashing out at her supposed weakness. In the moments sleep catches her unawares, she dreams of him. And feels him. The pressure of his hands around her waist. Those same hands sliding down her hips and along her inner thighs. Hot breath against her neck, tickling her hairline. She often wakes up in a sweat, disoriented by her surroundings and unsure of the time of day.

She is close to succumbing to another bout of sleep when Finn rushes into the room, holding an open book in his hands. It’s one of the Jedi texts she stole from Luke on Ach-To. Blinking back the sleepiness from her eyes, she sits up hurriedly and Finn slides next to her. 

“Look Rey,” he says pointing to a diagram of interconnected circles. “I keep getting drawn to this page and this drawing in particular. I don’t understand what it means, but I think it’s important.”

She grabs the book from his hands and runs a finger along the image. “I feel it too,” she says after a moment. “How do we translate it?”

“I believe C3-PO downloaded these texts to his memory.”

They share a brief look and then bolt off the couch, heading in the same direction.

“3-PO!” Finn shouts.

They look around the deserted hangar. Most Resistance members left the base already. Most went back home in search of surviving family and friends or for a new life elsewhere in the galaxy. Rey has only left Arjan Kloss a handful of times, but keeps returning because it feels the most like home.

“Why does he never show up when you want him too?” Finn mutters aloud.

“In the corner,” Rey points out. They rush over to C3-PO, where he is standing next to an abandoned console, seemingly inert.

“Hello?”

At once his eyes light up as his gears rotate back to life. “Oh hello! It has been so long since someone sought me out, I have been experimenting with sleep and believe I may have finally achieved dreaming!”

Rey holds the book in front of him, cutting him off, “Do you have the translated version of this text saved to your hard drive?” His head jerks towards it and she points to the drawing. “Do you know what this is?”

“The World Between Worlds. Existence between life and death. A Jedi myth.” A sigh of relief fills her chest. _That’s it_. Already, Ben feels closer. “Does it say how to get there?”

“Access is considered an achievement of Force mastery. Details of it were hidden once Jedi began seeking it by unnatural means. ”

“Such as...?” Finn begins.

C-3PO regards him, appalled.

“It is quite unsavory.”

“Ben is there. I need to get back to him,” she pleads.

“If Master Solo is there then he belongs—”

“No, he doesn’t. He belongs with me,” Rey interjects.

Finn intervenes by stepping between her and C3-PO. “We’re going to get the information one way or another. Only you decide if you want to do it the easy way or the Babu Frik way...”

“Oh, please no! But be careful—Search for the World Between Worlds has claimed the life of many Jedi masters. It is rumored, the Jedi sought entry by placing themselves in a near death state. They reached out with the Force for permission and their request was either granted or denied, but be warned: Denial results in death.”

Finn gives her a look as if to say you can’t be serious, but Rey chooses to ignore it.

“Thank you” she replies more calmly, feeling a twinge of regret at her former rudeness and turns away.

She should be afraid, but all she feels is resolve—and clarity for the first time in months.

Finn grabs a hold of her arm, forcing her to face him. “Ben transferred his life force to save you and now you want to return the favor by possibly dying? You want to make his sacrifice mean nothing?”

“I know how it sounds, but I have to try. I-I can’t explain it, okay? But I have a good feeling about this. Do you trust me?”

He pauses, deliberating the question. “I don’t think I have a choice,” he says finally.


End file.
